Business Week shows that journalists love to talk about the death of something and the rising of the other. This time, in The Desktop Takes Center Stage Again they say things like:
And companies such as Adobe (ADBE) and Google (GOOG) have released or are testing products that let Web developers build desktop versions of online services and sites. Google launched a group of Web-to-desktop developer tools known as Gears in May (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/30/07, “Google Gears Up to Take Web Services Beyond the Web”). “Everybody wants to be on the desktop,” says Martin Kay, chief executive of online music site Finetune, which recently introduced a way to make the company’s music-streaming and recommendation service available on the desktop. “People tend to forget about Web sites.”
Gears isn’t about helping “Web developers build desktop versions of online services and sites”. The whole point is that Gears gives the browser new powers!
It adds a small set of key functionality that developers can build upon, just as they did on XMLHttpRequest.
This isn’t about having people developer desktop apps as different apps. It is about making the Web a better place….. and one that can work to some extent offline.
Gears and AIR are not the same thing. They suit very different needs, and can complement more than compete. I hope that over time this becomes more obvious.
One thing is for sure…. neither the desktop, nor the Web, are close to being “dead”.
